It was tempting. It really was. When we were planning our early Christmas services, we almost bought candles so that we could sing Silent Night by candlelight at the end of the service. It would have been beautiful. And wonderful. And wildly unfaithful to who we are as a church.

Why? Because we would have spend almost $300 on candles that we would use once a year. And we would have spent a lot of money on ourselves for something that just wasn’t that important.

So, instead, we” take that money and used it to buy food to make meals for the homeless. We’ll be able to make an extra 150 meals. I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to sing without a candle if it means that someone won’t go hungry for one night.

I guess at New Story we’re always going to face temptations like this…to spend money on ourselves and not others…to put beauty before outreach…to rationalize buying things that aren’t necessary while others are in need.

I hope you’ll join with me in praying that we will never be like that. One of our core values at New Story is to live out our faith through our actions. It’s easy to talk about living faithfully. It’s another thing to live it. Pray that we live it. At volume 10. So that the unchurched can see that church doesn’t have to be stuffy, and pretentious, and focused inwardly.

We’re New Story Church, and we’ll be singing without candles this year! But we will have communion, great music, and incredible fellowship. We hope you’ll join us this Wednesday, December 17th at 7 p.m. at our Peter’s Creek Campus, and on Monday, December 22nd, at 7 p.m. at our Waughtown campus.

Locations

We worship on Sundays at 10:30 a.m.. at our West End campus (1001 Reynolda Rd), and Mondays at 6:45 p.m. at our Waughtown campus (1024 Waughtown St.)Please feel free to come early for coffee and fellowship.